The media generally focuses on men's sport - and you'd be forgiven for thinking that football, golf, rugby, darts, cricket, snooker and F1 - with tennis being added in for two weeks a year - were the only sports ever played. No wonder girls grow up thinking that the way to the body beautiful (which every magazine tells them they need to have or their life is over) is to starve themselves rather than to exercise.

What's really annoying is that the shortlist was chosen by a selection of the very same people who maintain the male orientated focus on sports - sports journalists and newspapers. Those lists have been published by the BBC.

Giving the same blinkered journalists the choice over the shortlist is, frankly, just perpetuating the problem.

We have plenty women, at the top of their game - but their achievements aren't recognised. I'm not sure what the answer is. Maybe it's time for there to be a much more aggressive media strategy for female sports champions. There are several who deserve a place on that shortlist this year. Someone needs to organise an alternative list and leave BBC's Sports Man of the Year to its own devices.